"Huh!" said Pecos, "I hope they don't try no buen' amigo racket on me—I was raised to regard Mexicans like horny toads."
"All men is brothers—that's my motto. And they's good Mexicans, too, remember that. Just think of Joe Garcia!"
"Yes!" rejoined Pecos, with heat, "think of 'im! If it wasn't for that saddle-colored dastard I'd be free, 'stead of rottin' in this hole. I says to the judge: 'I bought that cow and calf off of Joe Garcia—there he is, standin' over there—I summon him for a witness.' 'Is that your calf?' says the judge. 'Kin savvy,' he says, humpin' up his back. 'Did you sell him to this man?' 'Yo no se!' says Joe, and he kept it up with his 'No savvys' and his 'I don't knows' until the dam' judge throwed me into jail. Sure! I'm stuck on Mexicans! I'll brother 'em, all right, if they come around me—I'll brother 'em over the head with a club!"
"Jest the same, it was Mexicans that saved your bacon last night," retorted Angy, with spirit. "Some of these white men that you had beat up were for pushin' your face in while you was asleep, but when I made a little talk in Spanish, touchin' on your friendly relations with the Garcia family, the Mexicans came over in a body and took your part. That was pretty good, hey?"
"Um," responded Pecos, but he assented without enthusiasm. Barring the one exception which went to prove the rule, he had never had much use for Mexicans—and Marcelina was a happy accident, not to be looked for elsewhere in the Spanish-American world. Still, a man had to have some friends; and a Mex was better than a yegg, anyhow. He looked around until he found the tall man who had called him compadre and beckoned him with an imperious jerk of the head. The Mexican came over doubtfully.
"You speak English?" inquired Pecos. "That's good—I want to tell you something. My friend here says you and your compadres stood up for me last night when I was down and out—hey? Well, that's all right—I'm a Texano and I ain't got much use for Mexicanos in general, but any time you boys git into trouble with them yeggs, jest call on me! Savvy?"
The tall man savvied and though Pecos still regarded them with disfavor the Mexican contingency persisted in doing him homage—only now they referred to him as El Patrón. Patrón he was, and Boss, though he never raised a hand. Interpreting aright his censorious glances the sons of Mexico confined their celebration of the Dawn of Freedom to a carnival of neglect, lying in their bunks and smoking cigarritos while the filth accumulated in the slop cans. Under the iron rule of Pete Monat they had been required to do all the cleaning up—for in Arizona a Mexican gets the dirty end of everything—but no sooner had Babe sung his clarion call for freedom than they joined him, heart and hand. If the Society of the Revolution was at all related to the Sons of Rest they wanted to go down as charter members—and they did.
The time may come when cleanliness will be an inherited instinct but at present most of the cleaning up in the world is done under compulsion. Parents compel their children to wash and change their clothes; employers compel their wage-slaves to scrub and clean and empty; cities compel their householders to dispose of sewage and garbage; but not even among members of the capitalistic classes is there shown any clean-cut desire to do the work themselves. The Arizona Indians escape their obligations by moving camp at intervals, and God's sunshine helps out the settlers; but in the Geronimo jail there was no sunshine, nor could any Indian break camp. They were shut in, and there they had to lie, three deep, until the judge should decide their fate. For two days they had luxuriated in anarchy, philosophical and real, but neither kind emptied any garbage. The jail was the dwelling place of Freedom, but it smelled bad. That was a fact. Even the Mexicans noticed it, but they did not take it to heart. It was only when Boone Morgan came down for a batch of prisoners that the community got its orders to clean up.
These were busy days with Boone—opening court, arraigning prisoners, summoning witnesses, roping in jurymen, speaking a good word for some poor devil in the tanks—and it kept him on the run from sun-up to dark. He knew that Pecos Dalhart had broken up his Kangaroo Court and that Angevine Thorne had pulled off some kind of a tin-horn revolution on him, but he didn't mind a little thing like that. Jail life had its ups and downs, but so long as the cage was tight the birds could do as they pleased—short of raising a riot. At least, that was Boone Morgan's theory, based on the general proposition that he could stand it as long as they could—but when at the end of the second day he caught a whiff of the sublimated jail-smell that rose from the abiding place of liberty he let out a "whoosh" like a bear.